Posted!

Join the Nation's Conversation

'I was so convinced we were right'

Kevin Pieper, USA TODAY
1:01 p.m. EDT June 5, 2014

Richard Homan, 89, reflects on his service during World War II. He landed on Utah Beach on June 10, 1944, with the 9th Infantry Division and was wounded the next day by an artillery blast that killed a friend next to him.(Photo: Kevin Pieper, USA TODAY)

Richard Homan remembers watching a movie in Bristol, England, when the theater manager stopped the show, turned up the lights and summoned military personnel in attendance to the stage.

"He announced the war in Europe was over," Homan recalls. "Pure bedlam broke out." People jumped up and were screaming and clapping. It got to be a pretty wild night."

That was May 8, 1945.

Just two years earlier, the then-18-year-old Homan was working as a milk deliveryman in Henry County, Ohio — 53 stops on a 110-mile route — when he was drafted. His three older brothers were already serving.

"I was so convinced we were right," Homan says, recalling his feelings about going to war.

After training at Fort Riley in Kansas and an Atlantic crossing in which his transport ship became separated from its convoy and was attacked by a German submarine, Homan was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division.

His unit began additional training in Wales in early 1944. "We knew something was coming," he says. "We started running obstacle courses that included coming in from the ocean to shore."

By mid-May, the 60th Regiment was in Bournemouth, England, and placed in isolation in a hotel. On June 7 or 8, his outfit was moved to Southampton on England's southern coast. Homan and the rest of his battalion had no idea the invasion of Europe had already begun.

"We saw a ship that was shot up," Homan says. "It was the first time we realized that it was on."

Crossing the English Channel on June9, the conversation among Homan and his fellow soldiers turned philosophical. He recalls the questions that were being asked: Is this trip really necessary? Should we be doing this? How do we justify this?

"Generally, the conversation turned to the carnage that was going on there," Homan says. "And we were watching it. Everybody came to the conclusion: 'Let's get this on so we can get home. Whatever is going to come up, let's go.'"

On the morning of June 10, Homan transferred from his transport ship to a heavily pitching Higgins landing boat off Utah Beach. He mistimed his jump and fell 15 feet to the bottom of the boat. He quickly regained his composure.

"I yelled, 'Get us in close,'" he says. "The coxswain said, 'I'll get you so close the tops of your boots won't get wet.'"

A sandbar stopped the Higgins boat short of that goal. Homan and others waded in with water up to their necks.

There was only scattered artillery fire, and Homan's outfit suffered no causalities in the landing. That would come the next day.

The 9th Division pushed across the Normandy Peninsula with little resistance until reaching the area of Carteret, where it ran into heavy artillery fire. Homan sought cover behind a hedgerow next to a friend, Smith Griffin.

"He told me to get down, and I said I can't because I won't be able to see them coming at us," Homan says. At that moment, an artillery shell burst right above Homan. "I saw a piece of shrapnel hit right between my feet."

Another piece hit Homan in the hand. Blood was shooting in all directions. He suffered a concussion and a blown ear drum. The blast bent his M1 Garand rifle into an arc. "You could shoot it around a corner," Homan, now 89, jokes.

As Homan regained his bearings, he turned to his buddy. Griffin was dead.

After several months recuperating in a military hospital in Bristol, Homan began training replacements for the Battle of the Bulge. One officer who came from the States happened to be his brother, Capt. Robert Homan.

After the war, Richard Homan went on to serve as a special agent for the FBI. He has been married for 67 years. His wife, Mildred, was a Marine during World War II, stationed at Marine headquarters in Washington, D.C. They have five children, 14 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, with twin great-grandchildren on the way.

"Crossing the English Channel, I had this tremendous sense of history," Homan says from his Mountain Home, Ark., home. "Even as a 19-year-old, I remember thinking there is no way this isn't going to be a historic moment."